


With Sincere Thanks

by scramjets



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:29:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8219243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/pseuds/scramjets
Summary: So what if Leonard's a little heavy-handed with the hypospray. Jim's the one with the sensitive neck, god help him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Pic of the Day #29](https://www.imzy.com/kirk_mccoy/post/pic_of_day_29) over at the Kirk/McCoy comm on Imzy, and a couple of very helpful comments by infiniteeight :D.

“What the hell, Bones?” Jim swipes at his neck and then stares at his fingers as if expecting blood. “That hurt.”

“‘That hurt’,” Leonard says. “Goddamnit, kid. Before you ended up here, you willingly beamed down to a planet where everything comes in shades of teeth and claws. Remind me again what got you?”

There’s a pause before Jim says, “A Dropbear. They’re endangered,” he adds.

“God save the carnivorous koala,” Leonard mutters, dropping the hypospray on the med tray beside him before picking up his tricorder. A quick scan tells him that all Jim’s vitals are fine and there are no bacteria or viruses or otherwise gaining any sort of foothold over Jim’s immune system. “You may go.”

Jim slips off the biobed, grumbling and still rubbing his neck. “I thought you were under oath to do no harm.”

“Oh, for--”

“I have a sensitive neck,” Jim says, yanking down the collar of his shirts to expose juncture of his neck and shoulder. The skin’s red and irritated, and it’s only due to this that Leonard steps forward and brushes Jim’s hand aside to properly check. He runs his fingers over the strip of skin to feel for any breaks or bumps. 

“Well, Jim,” he drawls, not the slightest bit guilty. He steps away and folds his hands together behind his back. “My prognosis is that you’ll live to see tomorrow, so long as you keep your damn hands off and leave it the hell alone.”

-

What Jim says doesn’t entirely register until later, when Leonard’s standing on the bridge and staring out to the broad expanse of space.

He remembers the first handful of times he had stood in this spot, how his stomach roiled; vaguely agoraphobic on top of the ever-present aviophobia. Jim, in those early days, had turned to him with a grin, and it was only by virtue of their years together at the Academy that Leonard knew he was asking if he was okay. The question tucked in beside the eagerness and excitement of their first mission and Jim's captainship.

Leonard’s stomach still drops each time he steps onto the bridge, when he gets that first sprawling view of space; discomforted despite the floor beneath him and the however many metres of cold metal, cables, cords, and computers that separate the flesh and bone of the Enterprise from the endless expanse of infinity… but it’s a background sort of recognition. 

What’s in the foreground of his thoughts, however, is Jim.

“I have a sensitive neck,” Jim had said, petulant. 

The lights in medbay are sterile and bright. Makes it easier to see. To keep clean. To do their job.

On the bridge, it’s a little different -- the colours from the various controls; the projections in shades of green and blue. The red, blue, and yellow of those on shift overlaid by the hum of electronics and voices. It's still bright, but not in the same way. Leonard recognises the comfort in it.

“I have a sensitive neck,” Jim had said.

Leonard looks. From where he stands just behind Jim’s shoulder, he sees the shell of Jim’s ear and the slant of his cheek down to where it curves to the line of his chin. Leonard ignores all this to follow the column of his neck.

The thermal shirt hides where Leonard had injected the hypo, but memory quickly steps up to fill in the blanks, dragging the picture of Jim on the biobed and Leonard’s own fingers yanking the stretchy black material down. If he concentrates hard enough, Leonard can feel the grain of Jim’s skin under his fingers. And if he concentrates harder, he’s aware of the play of muscle beneath that.

Leonard swears and jams his fingers against his eyes.

Jim glances at him. 

God help him, Leonard thinks when Jim, assured that he’s okay, turns back network of stars studded in the sea of black. Jim has a sensitive neck.

-

Truth be told, Leonard knew this on some level. He didn’t trudge through some three years of Starfleet Academy, and as sole witness to all of Jim’s transgressions to not recognise it. 

He’s been forced to his quarters by Chapel and a choice few of her words. Exhaustion thrums through him after the mess of a landing mission that saw at half a dozen casualties. The native inhabitants had not exactly been welcoming, and the truce they had established had been unstable and easily upset. The landing party had escaped only by the skin of their teeth.

Leonard rubs his face and reaches for the tumbler of bourbon. The taste of it is warm on his tongue, and it suffuses through his body and works to unpick the knots of tension along his shoulders and at the base of his skull. And it’s then that he thinks of Jim.

Jim, of course, had ended up in medbay with a wry grin and a smear of blood on his brow, and his skin mottled pink with some kind of reaction to the native fauna.

“Turns out,” Jim had told him. “That you’re not supposed to drop the flowers. They’re considered a gift of the earth and so they’re sacred.”

“Turns out,” Leonard had said. “You’re allergic to ‘em either way.” And then he had punctuated the statement with a hypo.

Jim had yelped and slapped a hand on his neck. “What the actual hell, Bones? I just-- I just _saw_ you fix up Ensign Gansey.” He checked his fingers, frowning, then glared at him. The white lights in medbay wash out the colour of his eyes. “So I know for a _fact_ that you can actually administer these things without needing to jam it through my neck.”

“Well,” Leonard had said. “I’m not annoyed at Ensign Gansey.”

Leonard takes another mouthful of bourbon to blur the way his memory is throwing snapshots of their Academy years together, all those instances where Jim had sported bites and bruises at the juncture of his neck; at how Jim sometimes rubbed at them and how his mouth would drop open a little.

“Would you quit that,” Leonard had said, too many shades of frustrated to pin down what annoyed him the most. “Goddamnit, Jim. I’m trying to study here.”

Jim laughed and leered at him, and the smile never did quite fade from his face. 

-

“Y’know,” Jim grumbles, once more in medbay and finally patched up following the conclusion of another mission. “I think you like this. I also think you’ve got issues.”

Leonard drops the hypospray on the tray and doesn’t deign to answer.

-

They’re on shore leave for the first time in about three months. Leonard still distrusts space on a fundamental level, defines the dislike as ‘self-preservation’, and however much familiar the Enterprise is and however much he’s accustomed to watching the stars, the concept of solid ground is a gladly welcomed thing. 

At any rate, the anticipation and excitement that buzz through the ship is palpable, and Leonard isn’t immune.

“Any plans, Bones?” Jim asks. 

Leonard squints at him. At the leer that exists in the smile Jim wears. It doesn't appear much these days, and so the hint of it turns something hot and liquid in Leonard’s gut, bringing with it flashes of: Jim at the Academy with red-purple bruises sucked at his throat. And: Jim on the medbay biobed with his fingers dragging across the skin of his own neck. 

The images shift and merge and present Leonard with a third variation: Leonard’s own mouth on Jim’s skin, Jim’s head tipped back and eyes glassy, mouth parted as Leonard bites down--

“Bones?”

“What?” Leonard snaps.

Jim blinks at him. “Wow, okay.”

Leonard slides a hand down his face, suddenly weary right down to his bones. “Sleep,” he says. “My plan is to sleep for the entire week and nothing you can say or do will stop me.”

-

Jim stares at the hypo in Leonard’s hand and then to his face. His eyes are pale blue and Leonard entertains a brief but very blinding hate towards the too-bright medbay lighting. 

“Y’know,” Jim says. His gaze is still jumping from the hypo to Leonard’s face. His expression is even, jaw set. “Y’know,” he says again. “If you’re _that interested_ in my neck, there are other ways to show it.”

“This won't hurt a bit,” Leonard says. “Now shut up and keep still.”

-

The colour of the bruising around Jim’s neck makes Leonard think of velvet, but it comes with none of the regality and prestige. The bruises form in the shape of wide hands and the bottom drops out of Leonard’s stomach each time he sees, but he refuses to let it show on his face or -- heaven forbid -- his hands, as he tends to Jim who’s lying loose-limbed and medically unconscious on the biobed.

Leonard’s throat grates as he swallows, and he does it again against the skitter of nerves that sit at the back of his throat; the flutter of them in his gut as he draws his fingers over the marks, fighting a raw sort of anger. The blasted missions, he sometimes thinks, are hardly worth the results.

“Doctor,” Chapel says, and it takes all of Leonard’s self control not to visibly startle. He accepts the hypo from her and injects it, taking care to find a clear smudge of skin so as not to cause Jim any further pain, unconscious or not.

The purple eventually fades to a mottled green, to a bottle yellow, to clear skin. If Leonard squints... If he stares hard enough, he thinks he can see the smallest dot of red from the hypo. 

-

There’s a catch in Jim’s voice and Leonard knows him enough to recognise triumph when he hears it.

“Bones,” Jim is saying.

Leonard presses his face against Jim’s neck. The curve of Jim’s collarbone jams against the bridge of Leonard’s nose, but he _does not care_. 

“Bones,” Jim says again.

“What,” Leonard says, the word muffled against skin. It tastes hot under his mouth, blood-warm.

He knows Jim is smiling.

They’re bare-ass naked. He’s hot, and it’s disgustingly sticky, and there’s at least one perfect imprint of teeth on skin between them. If inspected, one would find the bottom row has a couple of crooked teeth. If inspected, Jim has a straight set. 

Leonard sighs and relaxes, breathes in the smell of Jim’s skin -- a little sweaty, but familiar, then he shifts to graze his fingers over the marks on Jim’s neck, watching how the tendons jump at the contact. Leonard pushes in a well-worn spot, the exact location Leonard is exquisitely familiar with and Jim hitches in a breath.

“Bones,” he says again; a different tone this time, shifting and restless, eyes gone half-mast and a shade of blue that Leonard is unfamiliar with -- darker than he’s seen and nothing like the washed-out colour he’s far too acquainted with.

“I hear you’re sensitive,” Leonard says. “Here.”

“Yeah,” Jim goes. “A little.”


End file.
